1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a program, and an information processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a program, and an information processing system which enable accurate identification of a specific program from among an increased number of programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, a broadcasting station that performs digital broadcasting transmits data including: image (video) data and audio data accompanying the image data, as data of a program (hereinafter referred to as “program data” as appropriate); EPG data used to display an electronic program guide (EPG); and so on.
The data transmitted by the broadcasting station (hereinafter referred to as “transmission data” as appropriate) is received by a reception apparatus such as a television receiver (TV), a hard disk (HD) recorder, or other types of video recorders.
The reception apparatus uses the EPG data to display the EPG.
For example, the EPG data includes information concerning programs (hereinafter referred to as “program information” as appropriate), such as titles of the programs (i.e., program names), channels (i.e., broadcast channels (broadcasting stations)), broadcast start times, broadcast end times (or broadcast times), people appearing in the programs, summaries of the programs (text describing the summaries of the programs), and so on.
In the reception apparatus, a specific program is identified using the title, the channel, the broadcast start time, and the like included in the EPG data as the program information, and a process targeted at the specific program is performed. Examples of such processes include a process of scheduling recording of the program, and a process of scheduling viewing of the program.
More specifically, if a user operates the reception apparatus so as to display the EPG, for example, the reception apparatus displays the EPG in accordance with the EPG data received from the broadcasting station. If the user further operates the reception apparatus so as to specify a specific program on the EPG displayed by the reception apparatus and schedule the recording of the specific program, the reception apparatus schedules the recording of the specific program specified by the user.
Recent years have seen a spread of reception apparatuses that perform a process of conducting a search in the EPG data received from the broadcasting station for a program that is likely to interest the user, based on a history of viewing of programs by the user or the like, and scheduling the recording of that program, for example. This process is called “auto-programmed recording,” for example.
Since there is a limit to the data amount of the transmission data that can be transmitted from the broadcasting station (i.e., a transmission rate), it is difficult to allow a limitless amount of information related to the programs to be included in the transmission data. As such, there have been proposed a method of acquiring the information related to the programs by performing a search for web pages related to the programs (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-101216, for example), and a method of acquiring the information related to the programs by using a means other than the airwaves (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-374506, for example).